"White Noise," the troublesome geocache we placed last November, has had three recent DNFs. I found myself unmotivated to check on it - because I just knew it was missing again. I finally went out last night, though. It was, indeed, gone. Phillip made the decision this morning to archive it - our second archived geocache. I liked the general location of the cache, but the specific location was just too much work. I'm anxious to find a better location.

So, here is the story of "The Vampires' Request."

The sport and/or game of geocaching began when the first geocache was placed outside of Portland, Oregon on May 3, 2000. In August of 2000, a geocacher named Jeremy created a web site named geocaching.com to track and log geocaches. He formed a company named Groundspeak exclusively to manage geocaching.com. Geocaching.com is not the only geocaching web site in the world, but it is, by far, the largest.

I did not know any of this history when we bought our GPS receiver in May 2005 and set up our account on geocaching.com. With my naturally investigative, web surfing, nature, however, I learned the above history. I also learned that Groundspeak is headquartered right here in Seattle. Eventually, I learned - probably through the geocaching.com forums - that there is a geocache inside Groundspeak headquarters. The Groundspeak headquarters cache is technically "archived," which means that you can't find the geocache listing simply by searching for geocaches in the general area. You have to know what to search for. Even if you find the cache listing, however, you won't know where to find the cache. The location of Groundspeak headquarters is a secret. The coordinates listed for the cache are in the middle of Lake Union. The mailing address for Groundspeak is a city park at the base of Queen Anne Hill. The only way to find your way inside Groundspeak headquarters is to be invited in by the Groundspeak staff.

Eventually, I found the listing for the Groundspeak headquarters cache - either through the forums, or by looking at some fellow geocacher's finds (I don't remember). A lot of geocachers, it seemed, have been invited in. The question was, however: How (or why) did they get invited in? It was, frankly, a question I didn't feel any rush to find the answer to. My guess was that once a geocacher reaches a certain number of finds, or maybe a certain age of their account, they are deemed worthy of an invitation.

Then, on our recent geocaching trip with SnowWolf, we learned that he had already logged a find at Groundspeak headquarters. He was unable (or maybe unwilling) to tell us why he had been invited in. That seemed to have sparked a lot of curiosity in Phillip, and it rubbed off on me. How did SnowWolf get an invitation? His account is about a month younger than ours, and he has less finds than we do.

I began studying the logs for the Groundspeak headquarters finds. Geocachers with thousands of finds were invited in, along with geocachers with only double-digit finds. Newbies were logging finds with old-timers. Phillip was studying the logs, too, but neither one of us was finding any sort of pattern. Why hadn't we been invited in? I then began finding unintentional clues in the photographs posted in finders' logs, and I thought those clues had given me a pretty good idea of what neighborhood to look in. We told SnowWolf of our findings, but he offered no help. My plan was to go out on foot some morning and try to find a building that matched the clues. Meanwhile, Phillip had been studying those same photographs and, before I'd found the opportunity to begin my walking search, he uncovered some more clues which contradicted my clues.

One evening, Phillip and I studied the photographs together, and by cross-referencing other information, we uncovered unquestionable proof of the location of Groundspeak headquarters. We then knew where the building is, and the question became: How do we use that knowledge to get invited inside? It seemed obvious that we needed to let Groundspeak know of our discovery, and hope that the staff would be amused enough to invite us in. How should we let them know, though? Phillip had two ideas: (A) Since it was time for us to renew our premium membership, we could offer to deliver our payment in person, or (B) We could plant a geocache right in front of Groundspeak headquarters, and let the cache reviewers know what we were up to. Plan B seemed like the option with the better chance of success.

That's why we hid "The Vampires' Request." (Phillip came up with the name. According to legend, a vampire cannot enter your home unless you invite it in.) It worked perfectly. We have been invited in.

I wrote earlier that I was disappointed that our cache will not get approved, but after further thought, I agree with the decision. How long would it be, really, until people figured out the significance of our cache location, and the secret location publicly revealed?

My translation of the word "cuareada" was wrong. I'm not surprised. The sentence didn't make much sense to me. I was surprised, however, that at least two of my Spanish-speaking coworkers didn't know what the word means, either. None of the online dictionaries I found could translate it. Finally, after some internet searching, I figured out that "cuareada" does, in its main use, mean "divided into quarters" - but it also means "cracked," the way the ground does when it's dried out, like this. Now the sentence makes sense.

The ulterior motive of "The Vampires' Request" appears to be working. Last night, we were extended an invitation. We now need to arrange a time. Then, this morning, we got word that the reviewers at geocaching.com have reversed their earlier decision and are not going to publish our latest cache after all.

When we first hid that cache, I didn't have much hope that it would be published. Then, I was surprised that it would be - even if we had to wait for the construction across the street. Now, I'm disappointed, somehow.

I have always enjoyed the way that vivid images, often as much emotional as visual, have come through the words that Gabriel García Márquez has written. The heat of the jungle oozes out of the pages as I read. I had always assumed that the images must be somehow more vivid and hot in their original Spanish. I am now discovering that I was right in that assumption - but in a way that I'd hadn't expected. I'm far from fluent in Spanish, so I'm reading the stories very slowly, reading one word at a time - con el libro en una mano, y con mi diccionario en mi otra mano. I'm reading without the aid of the glossary provided by ¡Piensa en Español! Magazine, and without the crutch of AltaVista's Babelfish. The dictionary can give me only a choice of definitions, each out of context, of each word I look up. Once I discover what the word means, I need to figure out what the word really means. I need to figure out what García Márquez was saying - and the best way I've found to do that is to visualize, and feel, the scene. That, of course, strengthens the scene even more.

"Mientras comían, el tren atravesó muy despacio un puente de hierro y pasó de largo por un pueblo igual a los anteriores, sólo que en este había una multitud en la plaza. Una banda de músicos tocaba una pieza alegre bajo el sol aplastante. Al otra lado del pueblo, en una llanura cuarteada por la aridez, terminaban las plantaciones."

The translation I think is correct, or close enough to right, is: "While they ate, the train passed very slowly over a metal bridge, and passed though the length of a town identical to the previous ones, only that in this one there was a crowd in the plaza. A band played a glad piece under the overwhelming sun. On the other side of the town, in a plain quartered by the dryness, the plantations ended." (Actually, I'm unsure about the word "cuarteada.") I have not yet reached the point where I can truly think in Spanish. I still need to translate into English, but that seems to work for now.